“Umbrella” rigs are commonly-used conventional fishing accessories which are designed to accommodate a plurality of fish hooks, lures, jigs, tube eels or similar fish hook devices suspended in spaced relation outwardly and downwardly from a single central fish line. Such rigs comprise a central support to which the fish line is attached, and generally two rigid but flexible diagonal wires which extend through and are attached to the support on slightly different planes and at right angles relative to each other to provide four wire arms having spaced termini, each which is adapted to have a fish hook device attached thereto and suspended therefrom to provide four spaced fish hook devices suspended from a single fish line attached to the central support. The support may also have a fish hook device suspended directly therefrom to provide a fifth such device, equispaced between the other four devices.
Such “umbrella” rigs generally are marketed in three standard sizes, as measured by the length of the two diagonal wires, the centers of which are attached to the central support. Such sizes are fifteen inches, twenty inches (most common) and twenty-five inches. While such rigs function well for their intended purpose, they present serious storage and handling problems due to their dimensions and due to the plurality of fish hook devices suspended therefrom. Also, such rigs, per se, are generally sold either unpacked or in original shrink packs or blister packs which support the rigs with the wires extended in normal use position, thereby requiring packs which are at least as long and wide as the size of the rig, i.e., twenty inches by twenty inches in the case of twenty-inch rigs. However, the rigs are also sold in flexed condition in long plastic bags.
Umbrella rigs containing the fish hook devices present important problems of storage and handling. The amount of storage space on a boat or in a fishing tackle box is quite limited and, therefore, umbrella rigs are difficult to store during periods of non-use. Also, one or more fishhook devices are generally suspended from each of the arms by a line so as to have a length of up to one or two feet or more down from each arm of the umbrella rig. The plurality of such devices coupled with the dangerous hooks thereon and the spread dimensions of the umbrella rig make it difficult to handle and store such loaded rigs without entanglement, injury and/or catching of the hooks in the clothing or boat parts.
Commonly, users will remove the spaced fishhook devices from the umbrella rig, i.e., unload the rig, to facilitate handling and storage. This is time-consuming and also disarms the rig so that it cannot be reused without reloading.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,623 issued to Robert W. Hawlie, relates to a storage device for umbrella rigs. However, in the Hawlie patent, the umbrella rig is stored in a folded condition, enabling the arms and hook devices thereon to become easily entangled. The present invention seeks to overcome this problem by providing a tackle box that is specifically designed to store umbrella hooks in a fully operational mode, ready to fish.